Legal Issues

Editing graphics brings legal aspects along with it. You need to know if what your are doing in the way of creating or editing graphics has no legal implications. When you are getting images for a logo, poster or picture you need to make sure that you have the rights to use that image appropriatley, the rights can be gained from the legal owner of the image. Failure to get the rights and continuing with the use of the image could result in a law suit against you and/or the business. Some things you need to think about are:

• Copyright - copyright is a obtained by buying it legally. it is used to show that you have legal ownership of an item, such as images, ideas, company names etc...
• Obtaining Permission - before you start to produce or legally sell someone elses work you need to obtain copyright permission. Permission is better the sooner you can get it as there is not a guarantee it will be granted so the sooner you know then the sooner you can change your plan. Should you make a product that you can sell, then expect to have to pay for copyright permission. When applying for permission you may want to include the following:

1. Full description of the work you want to use
2. How it will be used
3. Name of the author and the work you wish to use
4. How many units you predict to sell
5. Will it be altered in any way
6. Assurance that the work will be attributed and displayed appropriatley

The main implication that a graphics designer could face is that they could receive a "civil suit". They may receive this if they do not obtain permission from the legal owner of the image that they use.
even though graphics designers can get sued, they also haev the right to sue other people should people use their work without getting permission. A real life example of this:
A rgaphics designer created an identity for business cards for a client. The client took this design, and tweaked it a little, and reprinted the business cards, claiming that the design was comlpetley different and refused to pay the designer. To read the full story go to here

Limitations of Image Software

Adobe have designed a software called the Adobe Suite, and it is designed to let the user have the functions of all the tools in the software package ready to use. For example, Photoshop cannot vectorise images, how Illustrator can. If a user needs to edit an image, to reduce the glare, remove red eye in photographs, or edit the colours for a professional photoshoot then they would use Photoshop to do this, rather than Illustrator.

For capturing images, cameras, video cameras etc, they would already come with software that allow the user to import the photos from the device onto the computer.

When trying to resize images that you have made in Photoshop they lose quality as they are bitmapped, meaning is it more difficult to scale larger or smaller, but because Illustrator uses vector images then they are easier to scale as the image is just mathematical instructions and all it needs to do is change the numbers in the instructions.

Photoshop and Illustrator can both save images in different file types. All file types availiable in Photoshop are raster images as it uses bitmap and these are larger than vector because each pixel has to be stored. Photoshops default file type is extremely large as is has to store all of the editing data used, layers, filters etc. For Illustrator the file types are tiny compared to Photoshop as it uses vector images, so if you were to draw a simple shape, it would be a small mathematical equation rather than individual data for each pixel.

Evolving Output Media

One of the biggest evolving output media would have to be monitors. Monitors are going to start being created that have a larger definition. This will give the designer to chance to edit the more smaller parts of their image with much more ease.

HD monitors give videos a more realistic look, sharpening the edges and giving more vibrant colours. They are getting higher and higher contrast ratios all the time, for example although the human can barely tell the difference of anything over a 60,000:1 contrast ratio, monitors are still being made with contrast ratios such as 80,000:1 and they will be getting higher. A contrast ratio basically tells the difference between the darkest black and the lightest white. If a monitor has a 60,000:1 contrast ratio, it means that the white is 60,000 times lighter than the black. The same applies for any different contrast ratio.

LED monitors can give you a huge resolution, for example the top resolution right now is 1080p, (1920x1080). The letter "p" stands for "Progressive Scan" and this means that the image is not interlaced. 1080p is normally a widescreen model TV as it gives 1920 pixels horizontally, and 1080 pixels vertically.

In the future I expect that touch screens will become a new technology made openly availiable to everyone for their monitors, either watching TV or using on PCs. This will give graphic designers new oppurtunities to handle graphics with greater ease, getting rid of the need for a mouse and simply introducing the use of hands. A touch screen monitor will help a graphics designer to also create images, different stylus' can be used, each having its own effect (brush, pencil, pen etc) allowing it to feel as though they are drawing the object on paper. The keyboard could be built into the monitor, along the bottom for example so the option is still there to use a keyboard.

Printers are becoming faster and are being able to print better quality images. These advancements are going to be useful to a graphics designer who is needing to produce posters/flyers. Posters can often be large in size and this will require a higher image quality to make sure it looks as good as it can without any distortions. Printers can be more efficient now, saving on ink which can be quite expensive for a graphics designer, and also saving elctricity.
The colour ranges are becoming better in printers, giving a more dynamic looking print. Larger printers will print off larger images, up to A1 size, and still keep the quality as though it is on an A4 size. The biggeset right now is A1 paper, although in the future it may even become bigger.

Custom Briefs

We were set the task of creating briefs for a company that required something to be designed. I recieved a brief that asked me to create a logo for a zoo that incorporated an animal from the zoo in the logo, aswell as using the zoo's name. It stated that it wanted the text to be bold and easy to read.


Here is my partners review for my design:

This design is almost exactly what i asked for. The text is bold and it stands out, but it is simple to read. The design is also simple but it also shows the zoo name and it show us an animal that is related to a zoo, so therefore this all meets the requirements that i asked for. However there is one change that i would have liked to make which is i would have liked a better animal that more people like rather than a snake, e.g a more popular animal such as a monkey or a tiger. All in all the design is exactly what i asked for and meets all of the needs i wanted it to. There is not too much colour which means it will not cost a lot to print on things such as letters or memo's. Also they added slight annotations to the image but only pointing out the obvious points, but it does show some.


For my brief I used a recording studio that needed a new logo. It needed to use a drawing of headphones and it needed to use either the full name of the studio or just the initials. I asked for it to look 3D also.


It has fulfilled the requirements I set, it has used headphones, use of the name and looks 3D. There has been a good use of design notes, saying specificly what type font and what size. Few colours are used so the printing costs would be low. I understand the idea and it does have potential, specificly the second idea using the headphones wrapped around the initials.

EnCert Logo

For the EnCert logos I am trying to include natural objects, such as grass, wind, water etc... This is the first of three logos that I have created.

Microsoft Posters

Here is the first poster I have made for Microsoft to try and introduce Windows 7 to the public. It is a simple poster, with few elements.

Road-Side Food Posters

Here are the posters I have created for the Organic Food stand on the motorway. I gave the company the name "Organi-Burgers" and created two sets of posters for it. This is the set of signs that will be set out one after the other on the motorway, so as you drive past one you see another one.

Next is the poster I designed that has all the information on it. Just one single poster to be placed on the side of the road.

I tried to keep them simple, with not too much text on due to the fact that people will be driving past at high speeds and will not have the time to read a lot of information. I made it so that the text stands out from the backgrounds.

Customer Briefs

EnCert
A new company providing Energy Certificates to homeowners. 'Greener' houses are more desirable and the Energy Certificates form part of the Home Information Pack (HIP). All houses for sale with 4 bedrooms or more must have a HIP. (See the scheme of work for an example Home Information Pack) Encert require a logo for their website and letterheads. EnCert needs the logo to look professional and make the clients to associated it with energy (gas, electricity etc).

What this company wants:
EnCert are after a logo with a professional look, this means I will need to have a controlled use of colours. They are after a logo relateed to energy, so that means that I will have to use images or words to do with energy. Their logos' need to be used on things such as letterheads, posters, websites etc and will be aimed at people who are looking to acquire an Energy Certificate.

Microsoft
Microsoft approached Vizual Impact to produce some displays for its stand at a show to be held in the Birmingham NEC publicising its newest operating system. Produce a graphic that could be printed onto a large piece of card to be used on the Microsoft stand.

What this company wants:
Microsoft are after an eye catching poster that can be placed on a cardboard sign which is to be used to try and make their new operating system (Windows 7) more publicly known about. The colours on this poster need to be relevant to that of the Windows 7 theme, dark, neon blues and greens. It is going to be aimed at people who are unknowing about Windows 7, and make them want to be informed about it.

An organic mobile fast-food service has requested a roadside sign. It will be used on a stand so when its van is parked in a lay-by offering quality burgers and all-day breakfasts, passing motorists will notice it. This sign is to be in full colour and must be eye-catching .

What this company wants:
A bright sign that will attract drivers attention. Bright colours and big words need to be used to be able to catch motorists attention. They need it to emphasise the fact that they make "quality burgers" and "all day breakfasts". I will make various prototypes, some with all the information on one poster, another with the information spread out in a series of different posters. The posters are going to be used on roadside signs.

Upgrading a Computer System

I have been given a computer system and it's specifications and I have been told to make 3 hardware changes to suit the needs of a graphic designer. The system is as follows:

• Intel Pentium D "Dual Core" CPU (3.5 Ghz)
• VIA Chipset 1066 Mhz Motherboard - slots avaliable: AGP8x (1), PCI (3), RAM (2); ports available: LAN (1), USB (6)
• 512 MB RAM
• 80 GB HDD (SATA300)
• 18x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer & Dual Format
• onboard UniChrome PRO 3D Graphics with 64 MB shared memory
• mouse and keyboard
• 15" flat screen
• cheap inkjet printer

I am now going to identify 3 things that need upgrading and suggest improvements.
1) onboard UniChrome PRO 3D Graphics with 64 MB shared memory

• Because this is just a basic onboard graphics card it is not going to be very good at all. It also has 64 MB shared memory which could be improved greatly. To improve this I am going to suggest:
• Nvidia Quadro FX 2700M Graphics with 512MB DDR3 memory:
  This has a greatly improved memory capacity, 512MB rather than the really low shared memory of 64MB.
  

2) 512MB RAM

• 512MB is not a lot of RAM, and if I am dealing with a lot of images and have quite a few programs running then this RAM is not going to help me a lot. To improve this I am going to suggest:
• Upgrading to any RAM that is 4GB DDR3:
  Using this new RAM will give you an overall improved performance on your PC, reducing the risk of programs "freezing" or "not responding".
  

3) Cheap Ink Jet Printer

• A cheap ink-jet printer is not good for printing out images to a professional quality at all. To improve this I am going to suggest:
• Epson Stylus Pro 7880:
  This printer can print any size up to A1, allowing for a wider range of things to be printed off by the designer.

While trying to select a graphics card to upgrade to I came across two choices:
Nvidia Quadro FX 2700M Graphics with 512MB DDR3
and
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280M Graphics with 1GB DDR3 Video Memory
The lowest price I could find for the GeForce GTX 280M was £240.44 and the lowest price for the Quadro FX 2700M was £213.32. The GTX card is more expensive but comes with more graphics memory than the Quadro and this would be useful when working with graphics. Both cards are powerful enough to run the latest Adobe Suite without a problem. I would recommend the GeFore card as it is worth the extra bit of money as it is more future proof and reliable.

Digital Graphics Software

Photoshop:
Photoshop is a piece of software by Adobe and is one of the leading image editing software to date. Photoshop has many useful features for graphical designers. You can merge images seamlessly and this creates a panorama. A busy graphic designer can customize their keyboard shortcuts to allow them to get the most out of photoshop and to help them work more efficiently. for first time designers or people who are just using Photoshop for the first time, the newer version of Photoshop has a History Log, this keeps track of your editing history and should you forget how to create an effect or perform a technique you have before, you can look at the history log and view how you did it step by step.

Illustrator:
Illustrator is also another tool by Adobe, except Illustrator is more about "creating" images and drawing things rather than editing photos as such. It is mainly a vector based program and the images are saved as vector images although when they are displayed on the screen they are rasterised, or bitmapped. If the image is a vector image then the image is stored as a set of instructions, that is why when you resize it, it does not pixelate. The image files are smaller thatn bitmaps as they stores all the maths behind angles, line sizes colours. The reason it is smaller than bitmaps is because rather than saving each individual pixel and what colour/shading that pixel is, it simply stores the line/angle sizes and what areas have what colours, reducing the size drastically.

There are also free alternative to Photoshop or Illustrator, for example GIMP 2. A free program that allows you to manipulate images just as well as Photoshop or Illuastrator and may even be just as powerful.

Digital Graphics Computer System

Mouse:
A mouse is an input device that is used to interact with the majority of programs on a computer. Older models used a "ball" that had contact with a flat surface, and contact with rollers which detected movement and moved the mouse on screen accordingly. Now-a-days mice are normally optical, a laser that points onto the surface to detect movement. They can have "scroll wheels" which allow for the user to scroll down a page at a faster rate rather than using the scroll bar on the page. Mice are a great way to interact with a GIA (Graphical User Interface) as the movement is completley controlled by hand.


Screen:
Displays images that are generated by the video output from a computer. Older screens, or "monitors", we based around a Cathode Ray Tube - a vacuum tube containing an electron gun and a fluorescent screen. Whereas newer versions are normally plasma screens, or LCD displays. For graphics, a 26" widescreen or higher is normally best to allow you to have a good overview of everything on screen.

Graphics tablet:
An input device that allows for the user to draw items on screen. The touch sensetive pad is used to draw on with a stylus and this translate onto the screen. Although most graphics tablets do not display the image directly on the touch pad itself, there are some that you can buy that come with an in-built computer screen that you can see your drawings on instantly.


Digital camera:
A camera that captures images or videos digitally by using an electronic image sensor. Most digital cameras can record sound in videos also. Digital cameras can display the image you haev just captured immediatley after it is taken, something 35mm cameras cannot do. They can store mass amounts of images on a single memory unit and you also have the ability to delete these images to free up storage space. Using digital cameras to take images for graphics editing is both convenient and efficient as it allows you to capture and access image quickly.


Scanner:
An input device that can optically scan almost any object and convert it to digital image; images, letters, notes, signatures, book pages to name a few. Most modern scanners use CCD (charge-coupled device) or CIS (Contact Image Sensor) as an image sensor.

• CCD - In a CCD chip there is a photoactive region, which is an epitaxial layer of silicon, and a region called the transmission reader, made of of a shift reader, which is actually the CCD. To capture an image, a lense projects an image and tis cause the "capacitors" to gather an electric charge in proportion to the light intensity of the image. When exposed to the image, the control circuit forces the capcitors that are charged, to send the charge to it's neighbour capacitor. This is done until the last one dumps it's charge into a charge amplifier, and then this converts the charge into a volatge. When this is repeated enough times the semiconductor is converted into a sequence of voltages which is sampled, digitalized and stored.


• CIS - Consists of a linear array of "detectors" which are covered by a focusing lens. Behind these dectors are LED lights which are uysed for illumination, these lights are typiaclly red, green and blue. Light is gathered and combined from these LED (Light Emitting Diode) lights to create a white light, this is then directed on the object being scanned. The light reflected from the document is then gathered by a lens and directed at an image sensor. This records the image based on light intensity that is exposed to the sensor.

Flash Cards:
"Flash" memory is a type of memory that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It is a non-volatile computer memory and is used mainly in memory cards and USB flash storage drives, it allows for the transfer of data between not just computers but other digital products. It is useful for graphics editing as it allows you to transfer your data from one machine to another quickly.

USB storage devices:
USB (Universal Serial Bus) storage devices are able to be plugged directly into a USB port on a computer and the data stored on it can be transferred directly onto the computer, or vice versa. They primarily use flash memory to store data and most devices are portable. It doesn't require rebooting after it has been attatched to the computer and it doesn't need a battery supply. You can get USB storage devices with password protection and downloadable drivers which work like patches to allow them to work with older running systems. For graphics the same applies to USB storage devices as it does to flash cards, they allow you to transfer images easily.

Hard Drive:
A non-volatile storage device that can store data that has been digitally encoded on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces. Modern day HDD (Hard Drive Disc) are mainly a sealed unit unlike older models that had removable media. HDD memory is cheap to buy compared to other types of memory - RAM or cache memory. HDD record the data by magnetizing ferromagnetic material directionally so that they represent binary code - 1 or 0. To read the data back they detect the magnetic direction of the material. Some graphic formats take up a lot of memory, so if you're going to be making loads of different formats you are going to need a bigger HDD to store them all comfortably.

Graphics Card:
Graphics card are also known as Video Cards although their proper name is a GAC (Graphics Accelarator Card). They simply generate images that are displayed on the monitor. Graphics designers requier quite good GAC as they require the best detail they can get from their screen and they also require fast rendering to be able to tone up their work efficiently.

Processor:
Processors, or CPU (Central Processing Unit), is a circuit that is built to execute computer programs by executing a sequence of instructions called a program. CPUs use four steps; fetch, decode, execute, writeback.

1. Fetch - Retrieving the instruction from program memory. To find the location of the instruction from the program memory they use a Program Counter (PC), and this stores a number that identifies the current position in program. Once the instruction is fetched the PC reads the instructions in terms of memory units.


2. Decode -The processor breaks up the instruction into parts with significance to other parts of the CPU.
   


3. Execute - Portions of the CPU are connected together to allow them to perform the operations needed.

RAM:
A type of computer memory. Much more expensive than HD memory and the amount determines how well/fast your computer can handle the open programs on your computer. Having a larger RAM will help to increase your computers performance speed, and allow you to edit images easier and have less chance of freezing.

First Post

This is going to be a blog that covers all the work I am doing forUnit 24 (Graphis Design and Computers). Any work I do, editing pictures, taking pictures, data on computer hardware etc will be posted here.